II
THE OLD MAN SPEAKS
You take the high road,
you take the low road,
you take the bloody motorway:
but I was in Scotland 'afore ye ...
And in Ireland. And England. Roads were narrow then,
the high with low stone walls, the low with hedges,
blossom, finches, trains were grimy,
dog-end-filled and stopped at every village station,
bells ringing, whistles blowing, steam and
hats and skirts all blowing; time:
the whistles and the bells fell silent, cigarettes
were antisocial, steam and stations uncommercial,
girls wore jeans, wore strings, wore ...
Then was another world. You'd be an alien there.
In Andalusia I sat down and wept;
in Casablanca I remembered then, remembered
cold, grey seas and grassy dunes, the grey-green marshes
and the silence of the north
(a far-off bird, a summer insect,
breaking waves upon a distant beach: a lamb calling).
Catch a plane! Go home! they said. A plane?
I'd need a time machine.
There was a New Age in Olde Sasunn once,
England's spring, when all the world was green. Now
there is no place for Robin Hoods,
not in the woods at least;
all is private now, by land and sea,
but then, the coast, the marshes, creeks and inlets,
the forest then, the downs, the country towns,
Ludlow, Thetford, Frome - and Glastonbury,
the heart and home of the New Age -
the land was full of tracks and horses, full
of movement, full of saints and healers, players,
singers, travellers passing to and fro, to
Walsingham, to York, St Edmundsbury or to
Nottingham. For all there was a welcome everywhere.
Or if there was not - well, the woods were wide
and tracks between the trees and a welcome sure for a
free man there among free men -
and free deer. Justice
was harder still perhaps to come by, yes,
but then a man could go, could disappear
and live as a man should live, in freedom and privacy ...
Where can a man go now? Where can I?
Not just the streets but all the land is chartered,
not just the land but the sea, the sea bed,
the sky, the moon - the invisible stars are numbered.
There was a new age in the Highlands too
(not a New Age, but an age of change)
an age when men and sheep were weighed
and men found wanting, condemned and harried off
the lands their families had farmed in their innocence,
in trust and love, and sacrifice, for generations.
He'll look after his own. His own? Who's he selling
his great empty tracts of land to now?
Where will he spend the night? On the burnt-off moors?
Among the fenced-off lined-up trees? Or with
the outcasts of the inner city? - not just down
on their luck these days, but down on their knees
